silence-cut-edl

Silence Cut → EDL (auto-editor)

Detect silent sections with auto-editor and emit an editable timeline file instead of a finished audio render. Useful when the user wants final-say control: review the cut points in their editor, nudge any aggressive cuts, then render from the editor.

When to use

• The user wants to review cuts before committing.
• The user is integrating cleaned audio into a video edit and wants the timeline directly.
• The user prefers their NLE's crossfade/render quality to auto-editor's.

Do not use this skill when:

• The user wants a finished audio file → use silence-cut.
• The user wants both → run silence-cut for the bake and this skill for the timeline; they're cheap.

Inputs

1. Input file — required.
2. Editor target — one of: kdenlive (default — Daniel's editor), final-cut-pro, premiere, shotcut, resolve, clip-sequence (raw cut list as JSON).
3. Threshold — same semantics as silence-cut. Default 4%.
4. Margin — same semantics. Default 0.2s.
5. Output path — defaults to <input-stem>.<editor-ext> next to the input. Extension is editor-dependent (.kdenlive, .fcpxml, .xml, .mlt, .json).

Procedure

1. Confirm auto-editor is installed.

2. Map the editor target to auto-editor's --export flag:

   Target	--export value	Output extension
   kdenlive	kdenlive	.kdenlive
   final-cut-pro	final-cut-pro	.fcpxml
   premiere	premiere	.xml
   shotcut	shotcut	.mlt
   resolve	resolve	.fcpxml
   clip-sequence	clip-sequence	.json

   (Verify against the installed auto-editor version's --export --help if a target rejects.)

3. Build the command:

   auto-editor "<input>" \
     --edit "audio:threshold=<threshold>" \
     --margin <margin>sec \
     --export <target> \
     --output "<output>" \
     --no-open
   

4. Confirm the output file exists and is non-empty.

Output

• Timeline file at the resolved path.
• One-line summary: <input> → <output> (<n> clips kept, <pct>% cut).
• Hint to the user: open in their editor, review, adjust margins on tight cuts, render audio out.

Notes

• The timeline file references the input audio file by absolute path. If the user moves either file, the timeline breaks — call this out.
• clip-sequence (JSON) is useful for downstream tooling that wants raw timestamps without parsing an editor format.
• For very fine-grained review, lower the threshold and tighten the margin — over-cutting is easier to fix in an editor than under-cutting.